Quotes about difference
page 17

“I keep telling this story - different people, different places, different times - but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tight rope between two worlds.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook

People, World, Time

“So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, "There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue." There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

Nature, Evil

“I know the difference between right and wrong. I understand the rules. But today I feel that the rules have been blurred, because today they were literally on my front doorstep.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: Flawed

Feeling, Understanding

“The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

When asked how the world had changed following the September 11, 2001 attacks <br class="br"> Has the world changed? http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersreflections/story/0,1367,567546,00.html, The Guardian (October 11, 2001)

People, Faith, Religion, Confidence

“When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

God, Happiness, Suffering

“What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what
he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Help

“Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Way, Time, Personality

“But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.”

Elizabeth Strout book Olive Kitteridge

Source: Olive Kitteridge

Marriage, Fight

“Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes-each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.”

Sharon M. Draper book Out of My Mind

Source: Out of My Mind

“He was from a different class, too poor, and they would never approve if their daughter became serious with someone like him.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Daughters

“They were always like two people talking to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love, People, Sun

“That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: Weirdos From Another Planet: Calvin & Hobbes Series: Book Six: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection

Happiness, World

“Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference.
George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.
Martha: Amen.”

Edward Albee Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Source: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Truth

“Don't try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough & that makes all the difference.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Uselessness

“And everything would be different, different.”

Ismail Kadare book Broken April

Source: Broken April

“If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

Reading

“Develop the winning edge; small differences in your performance can lead to large differences in your results.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Life, Dreams

“Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”

Iain Banks book The Wasp Factory

Source: The Wasp Factory

People, Feeling

“But our eyes are different, what you see ain't what I see.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“I froze, shocked. (And don't try to claim that you did anything different the first time a government bureaucrat pulled a gun on you.)”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Time

“Which do you prefer, she says. Sex or Violence?
I try to smile. What's the difference, really.”

Will Christopher Baer Kiss Me, Judas

Source: Kiss Me, Judas

Smile, Sex

“The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Love, Sex

“I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Love

“I have loved and been in love. There's a big difference.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Love

“There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

People, Attitude

“One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books

“We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

“… The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different than the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there”

Ryū Murakami book In the Miso Soup

Source: In the Miso Soup

Loneliness

“We're frightened of what makes us different.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

“Like her father, he wasn't comfortable sharing his thoughts and feelings. She tried to explain that she needed to be closer to him, but it had never seemed to make a difference.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Feeling

“She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Life

“Forever [is] so many different things. It is always changing… it is twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wish would last and last”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Change

“Here's a basic difference between Morelli and me. My first thought was always of cake. His first thought was always of sex. Don't get me wrong. I like sex… a lot. But it's never going to replace cake.”

Janet Evanovich book Eleven on Top

Source: Eleven on Top

Sex

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

As quoted in Esquire, Vol. 76 (1971), also in Truman's Crises : A Political Biography of Harry S. Truman (1980) by Harold Foote Gosnell, p. 9; sometimes paraphrased: Being a politician is like being a piano player in a whorehouse.

Life, Truth

“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Love, Life, Thinking

“The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

Source: Into the Woods

“How do people stay in love, anyway? Is it a choice? Or is it like those plants we studied in biology that mutate into something new and totally different but are still part of the same plant family?”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Love, People, Family, Study

“She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Lowland

Source: The Lowland

Love, Learning, Heart

“I think we're made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you're left with less of yourself.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Thinking, Time

“I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that’s not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Life, People, Cars, Nature

“And I found that I can do it if I choose to - I can stay awake and let the sorrows of the world tear me apart and then allow the joys to put me back together different from before but whole once again.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Source: The Invitation

World, Tear, Joy

“Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Source: The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One

Feeling, Night

“Maybe this was what Aunt Peg meant all along - returning was a weird thing. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe our what came before.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Time

“The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

Hope, Personality

“People don't talk about anything… No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

People, Cars, Clothes

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Attributed to Emerson in Life’s Instructions for Wisdom, Success, and Happiness (2000) by H. Jackson Brown Jr., as well as numerous on-line sources since, the article "The Purpose of Life Is Not To Be Happy But To Matter" at the Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/11/29/purpose/ indicates that this quote is probably derived from various statements first made by Leo Rosten, including the following words delivered at the National Book Awards held in New York in 1962: "The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all." <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, Happiness, Wise

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Walden (1854)
Context: A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.<!--pp.366-367

Music

“The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

As quoted in New Scientist (February 1993), p. 42

Knowledge, Thinking

“There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Light

“A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.”

Jessica Mitford book Hons and Rebels

Source: Hons and Rebels

Books, Age, Way, Imagination

“Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Speed

“Events conspired to bring you back to where you'd been. It was what you did then that made all the difference: it was all about potential.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Happiness, People

“He can touch your soul. And there is a difference between having your heart break and having your soul shatter.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Soul, Heart

“Failure is acceptable. but not trying is a whole different ball park.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Source: For the Love of the Game: My Story

Failure

“Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Juan Muraña", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

Money, Way, Time

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

People

“Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care… -Wintergirls”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Life, Pain, Family, Thinking

“Mortals have always exaggerated the difference between hate and love. Both come from the heart. You can never hate strongly unless you have loved strongly.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

Love, Hate, Heart

“I felt amazed at the choosing one had to do, over and over a million times daily--choosing love, then choosing it again… how loving and being in love could be so different.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

Love, Time

“We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love, Time

“The difference between sex and death is, with death you can do it alone and nobody's going to make fun of you.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Also found in "Quotations According to Woody Allen" http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22quotations+according%22#search_anchor from the New York Times, 1 December 1975.

Death, Sex

“What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.”

Vikram Seth book An Equal Music

Source: An Equal Music

Love, Life

“You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Life is Elsewhere

Thinking, Time, Past

“We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Democracy, Time

“I have so many different personalities in me and I still feel lonely.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Feeling, Personality

“You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Variant: You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Way, Time, Personality

“This may be the curse of human race. Not that we are different from one anther, but we are so alike.”

Salman Rushdie book The Enchantress of Florence

Source: The Enchantress of Florence

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.”

George MacDonald book The Princess and Curdie

Source: The Princess and Curdie

“That somehow dreams are a blurred line between here and there, like a meeting room in a prison. You’re both in the same room, yet on different sides and really, in different worlds.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

World, Dreams

“I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.”

Ernest J. Gaines A Lesson Before Dying

Source: A Lesson Before Dying

Thinking

“But I wasn't happy… when I heard you two had assaulted Castle Macindaw with just thirty men,' [said Halt].
'Thirty-three,' mumbled Horace…
The Ranger gave him a withering look. 'Oh, pardon me… three more men does make a lot of difference.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

Men, Happiness

“Life isn't fair,' Skulduggery said. 'In my experience, death isn't so different.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

Life, Death

“Thinking very often resembles napping, but the intent is different. --Stephanie Plum”

Janet Evanovich book Seven Up

Source: Seven Up

Thinking

“I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Lying

“What was the self-sacrifice?"
I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes."
Why was that self-sacrifice?"
Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly.
I think we have different value systems."
Well mine's better.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

Love, Shoe, Thinking

“Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss, p. 118
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Life, Courage, Dead

“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Books, Home, Sense, Time

“People could bear so much, but Simon did not know how much of the original you was left when the world had twisted you into a whole different shape.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

People, World

“Half full, half empty, what the hell difference does it make? If there's something in the damn glass, drink it.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Angels Fall

Hell, Drink

“‎It isn't enough to stand up and fight darkness. You've got to stand apart from it, too. You've got to be different from it.”

Jim Butcher book Fool Moon

Source: Fool Moon

Fight

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 23: Of The Standard of Taste
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Source: Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
Context: Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.

Beauty, Beauty

“You've changed me, she thought. Not just showing me that boys aren't all pond scum. You've made me different, made me look at the broader picture. Given me vision.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Visions

Boy, Change

“One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.”

Patricia Briggs book Bone Crossed

Source: Bone Crossed

Truth

“Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: Uh-oh - Some Observations From Both Sides Of The Refrigerator Door

Life, Learning

“I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable nighttime conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there's no light in the room.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Way, Feeling, Light

“But love is different for every person. For some it's hate, for some it's joy, for some it's fear, for some it's jealousy, for some it's torture, for some it's peace. For some it's everything.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Love, Hate, Fear, Jealousy

“A demon, if you prefer the term; although to be honest, the difference between god and a demon is really only a matter of perspective.”

Joanne Harris book The Gospel of Loki

Source: The Gospel of Loki

God

“They didn’t agree on much. In fact, they didn’t agree on anything. They fought all the time and challenged each other ever day. But despite their differences, they had one important thing in common. They were crazy about each other.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Time, Romantic

“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15
Context: Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

Way, Study, Learning

“How long have you been a Wiccan?'
'A what?'
'A pagan. A witch.'
'I'm not a witch,' I said, glancing out the door. 'I'm a wizard.'
Sanya frowned. 'What is the difference?'
'Wizard has a Z'
He looked at me blankly.
'No one appreciates me.' I muttered.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks